According to a “SpoBis” report, the German Football League plans to abolish the English weeks from the 2025/26 season. This emerges from the documents for the tender for the coming rights period, which the sports business platform reported on.
The winter break will therefore be slightly shortened, and five more games will be kicked off at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday to relieve participants in the then reformed European Cup. New kick-off times are not planned.
In the current rights period since the 2021/22 season, ten games are planned on Sunday evenings per season. The DFL proposal, which according to the report has already been presented to the 36 professional clubs and is also being coordinated with the Cartel Office, no longer provides for a ban on single employment. The so-called “No Single Buyer Rule” recently prevented a media company from being able to acquire the rights to all games on its own. There are now significantly more bidders on the market than there were years ago.
The division into several subscriptions, like the games during the week, was met with displeasure among fan circles. Part of the tender for the coming rights period is also a changed distribution of the packages. The income from the sale of national media rights is of existential importance for German professional football – currently an average of 1.1 billion euros is earned per season.